I can see why the changes have been made, but this has the potential to backfire terribly- especially in this current climate (looking at you, COVID-19 pandemic and all it's travel restrictions). If everyone had the freedom to travel, it could work- but the timing is oh so off!
I'm sorry Niantic, you've opened the doors for more abuse. People submitting things not worthy to be POI out of boredom or just not knowing what is suitable. Sadly, putting a limit on abuse reports will also make it worse.
But in an ideal 'pandemic free' universe: this could be awesome. (With education on what's a suitable POI of course!- Key word is 'Education' *hint* ) My family live in regional towns in Australia and I have a personal preference to stop in towns rather than rest stops or the side of the road on my road trips. sigh
I'll acknowledge that the significantly increased refresh rate could lead to more chaff for the same bushel of good submissions if problematic submitters max out their capabilities. With a better than 80% acceptance rate and maxing out my submissions every fortnight, I think folks with my submission style will benefit significantly. I also enjoy hiking and camping, and that pool of 40 is whetting my appetite for submitting rural churches and trail markers to be the first Wayspot in the community.
As a reviewer, I'm ambivalent. As a submitter, I'm thrilled.
Yeah, same question. I have somewhere I'm going on the 15th, and I was going to save my 7 submissions that I am getting back around the 1st of October for then. So I'd hope I still keep my 7 I'd already have when the 12th rolls around... Because otherwise I'd only get to submit like 2 things in that area and lose my 7 slots.
WOW, lots of negative reactions! I don't really think that this is going to increase junk submissions any more than we had before. Junk submitters are new submitters. New submitters either become good submitters, or they quit submitting. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this doesn't have to be as bad as people are thinking it will. On top of that, it seems that something was changed recently to help nominations go through faster, so if that's the case, this isn't going to hinder submission times. Put another way - I think the only place where this is going to actually have a noticeable affect anywhere is in the DEDICATED submitters who consistently submit - they now can plan better for going to remote areas and have more than 7 submissions. For these Wayfarers, this is a HUGE gift.
So I say THANK YOU for this, and let's just wait and see if there are any issues before jumping to conclusions...
It's nice to get more slots, but it's gonna clog the system even more at worst.
I would really prefer to see a system where nomination slots are at least dependent on review activity.
Review activity is really awful for a while. People got no motivation to review, not even upgrades lure them and many players don't even know about the existence of Wayfarer.
If you have turned off newsletters, you never receive the mail which teaches you about Wayfarer. The Wayfarer system mails also absolutely do not mention its existence. Why? The only other way you may learn about it, is being in communities or reading news, but many aren't.
And ingame rewards would really be appreciated, even if it's one single Super Incubator in PoGo and a Very Rare Mulit-Hack and a Heatsink in Ingress.
You can't boost nomination amount while not boosting review activity.
I would say junk submitters are UNEDUCATED submitters (or abusive ones). I’m personally frustrated that we were told there would be a test for submitters, that hasn’t been implemented yet, and they are suddenly increasing nominations with a fast approaching date when it wasn’t even pushed that hard for.
If they announce the submitters test will be going live the same day, I think this news will be received differently.
There are also a few more aspects of this announcement that many of us are reacting to than just the increased nominations.
Description Edits - 2 Daily Accrual / 40 Daily Max
I take this to mean I accrue 2 per day, forever (no maximum accrual). I can use up to 40 per day, until I run out of accrued.
I like to explore places with my drone. And I like to do mission banners, then go through the keys I got from hacking (like a travelogue). If I'm at a place with lots of misspelled Titles, I could submit 40 edits one day, and another 40 the next.
That sounds fine for proven nominators/editors. But it's a big frightening for new people who submit their dog because "need moar pokestopz".
Putting everything else aside, being able to save up 40 nominations before heading out to a Wayspot-lacking rural town or national park is going to be a game-changer for me, it will make longer trips to out of the way locations much more worth it.
Okay, this is my take and bundle of questions on this.
New nominations: Okay, so let's say that someone just reached Level 38 in Pogo. When do the new nominations start accruing, when they first create their account, when they reach the eligible level, or when they pass the Wayfarer test? If we assume that a brand new Wayfinder begins with 40 nominations off the bat, and they think it's a fun idea to spam junk submissions, everybody is about to have a bad time. But for the dedicated people who are planning a fantastic road trip to a rural area with potential wayspots galore, it is going to be paradise. This needs to be capped and scaled by a Wayfinder's current prowess and track record.
Title/description/location edits: Overall there are decreases across the board. Like what oscarc1 said, I also like to go around my drone and fix the crappy titles and descriptions of people who can't capitalise things or spell. All of these are a massive reduction overall, from 56/28 per 14 days to a measly 28/14 per 14 days. That is horrendous.
Photo submissions: This makes me very sad. Don't know why there is such a massive cap, but now I'm even more limited to my photo contributions. As someone who uses all 56 photo contributions each fortnight, I'm making the wayspot network pretty with updated photos! Mainly because it's a hobby I do alongside playing games. Although I have finally caught up to my backlog and am now uploading photos just days after taking them, a few months back before lockdown I was over 9 months' worth of photo backlogs. And it took every fortnight in lockdown over the last three months to bring them all back down to today.
Abuse reports: Wait a minute, they're not called abuse reports in-game. They're called 'Report invalid Pokestop/portal'. I think they were at 200 at the moment, but if you're actually limiting this, then maybe you probably had issues reviewing all the false invalid reports perhaps? I don't use it that much because most things worthy of abuse don't go past the local reviewers.
AR scanning: Situational worth in Pokemon GO unless people grynded for a Galarian Ponyta or Poffins when it comes down to it. But in Ingress, because there is a hefty badge for 12,000 scout controllers (which is very competitive in some cities amongst agents), the volume of scans is important. I think Ingress has about 400 scans per 7 days? Keep the amount of scans in Ingress high.
But I hope this doesn't have the same numbers as they do in Ingress. For all of these, it is again another case where in an attempt to curb abuse, implementations are heavy-handed and there is collateral damage. All of a sudden, the new nominations are ample (which is fantastic for most people... of both natures) whether they're over the moon over being able to submit many more things or whether they'll have more fun submitting even more trash and increasing the backlog even more.
Please think about the following:
Tiering Wayfinders by their contributions. I've asked this in the AMA but it is in the lower echelons of that thread. This is what @TheAuraStorm-ING also suggested. This proposed system is nice if it were for everyone, but not everyone should be treated the same. A fresh Level 38 player is treated the exact same as a Wayfinder with over 1k wayspots approved and reviewed 80k nominations on Wayfarer. So tiering, for example could look like this:
Level 1 Wayfinder: 1 Every Other Day Accrual | 5 Daily Max
Level 2 Wayfinder: 1 Every Other Day Accrual | 10 Daily Max | Grant the ability for Wayfinders to use existing gallery photos for this level and above
Level 3 Wayfinder: 1 Daily Accrual | 20 Daily Max | Double Edit/Photo/Reporting/Scanning Accrual & Max
Level 4 Wayfinder: 1 Daily Accrual | 40 Daily Max | Double Edit/Photo/Reporting/Scanning Accrual & Max | Increase of editing distance
Level 5 Wayfinder: 2 Daily Accrual | 80 Daily Max | Triple Edit/Photo/Reporting/Scanning Accrual & Max | Sharp increase of editing distance
You can be creative on what increases the level of a Wayfinder. But in this model, know that most abusers will likely not make it past Level 2. Reward and acknowledge the Wayfinders who consistently contribute to your database.
Ingress is most likely going to be slightly different. Would you apply this system similar as well? So someone who has both Pokemon Go and Ingress will accrue one a day and build upon their max too? Recall that Pokemon GO has 7 nominations per 14 days, and Ingress has 14 nominations per 13 days.
When will the accrual occur? If someone is already at their max, would it start accruing exactly 24 hours when they used the nomination, or will it happen at a certain time each day? Maybe at midnight?
Almost everyone has an issue with turnaround times (although my city doesn't really... just in very specific pockets), but this has some potential to balloon to something too wild to bear. I think this is a nice system, accruing things at a daily rate rather than waiting for the slot to replenish after exactly 14 days.
But I am going to have a joyride visiting rural and regional towns, stockpiling nominations weeks in advance before a planned major roadtrip.
At least in my area, submissions take so long without upgrades that I end up upgrading every single one. This means I end up reviewing enough for an upgrade for every submission, so it probably does help overall if I, and people in cells that require upgrades, get more submissions that are worthless without 100 or so reviews. As for people in cells that aren't taking 2 years to resolve? I'm sure this will slow things down a little for them, but those cells are so boosted anyway that I can't imagine they'll see that big of a dip.
With whatever change that was implemented recently allowing nominations to actually move through the queue I would have probably waited until all the back logs were less than 30 days before doubling submissions for Pogo.
For me personally, as a rural player and obviously the only player who submits it helps me out greatly. I have about an 80% acceptance rate. My nominations move through quickly without upgrades.
However, as a reviewer I know a lot of things I review have been sitting g in queue forever. How do I know this? It's been at least 7 months since I've seen snow on the ground here. Many nominations in large cities in my state have snow in the pictures. That means they have been hanging around a while. Let's fix the backlog. Then add nomination capability.
Are you really serious? @NianticAaron@NianticGiffard@NianticCasey-ING@NianticTintino WHO comes up with such an idea? Do you actually know how damn full the queue is? For me a submisson without upgrade takes 18 months. There are places where a submisson without upgrade takes 1 week. There is currently no relation why there are so big differences in the processing time .And now you want to make the queue even fuller ??? Then it comes to an even bigger standstill. WHY you don't change the system so that 1 upgrade = 1 submisson!? Then the players HAVE to review before submitting. The pool would be processed much faster, fake submissons would be prevented, so why do you make the system even worse than it already is ???? This change is completely counterproductive. And makes absolutely no sense. Clearly far too much, the number of submissons should be reduced rather than increased.Or increase the number of submissons through a level system for players who continuously submit good submissons and evaluate them permanently, as a kind of reward. Here players are rewarded who rest on the work of others, who mess the pool or who deliberately clog the pool with fakes. But not like this. There are simply too many players who have never made or will do a review but who constantly propose new submissons to get one or more wayspots on their own doorstep far too often and not pay any attention to the quality of the submissons because Niantic is still Does far too little to educate the players (I only say information boards or bike paths). So Niantic should focus more on reviewing the players MORE and BETTER than submitting more!
Please institute a submitter test prior to this. This sounds like it will bog down an already stressed system without thinking of the consequence. We've been asking so long now for a way for abusers to actually get punished and for bad submitters to actually get educated on the eligibility and criteria.
already fed-up with fake nominations from children who play pogo. Now we can expect more because of this update. Well @NianticTintino please do something about technically verifying submission before putting it for reviewing in wayfarer. We are spending our time to make your lightship a better place..so give us some credits. Especially Ingress players who made this possible from start.
Now Ingress players and their game experience are not considered by Niantic and our contribution made worthless.
Please do something to prevent fake nominations, stealing photos of already submitted POI, and please prevent "Noobs who want Pokestop and gyms in their home " nominations.
Thank U .
Appreciate your efforts to make this better place.
So, as an Ingress player, I will now be getting slightly less theoretical nominations than before, albeit with the very considerable benefit that I can store more. I can live with this - the biggest problem with nominating for me is the 25 km distance limitation. If I want to nominate things, I have to drive from my house to do so, since almost all my candidates are between 30 and 40 km away. (I nominate canidates in the countryside, as my city is already well supplied with portals). Now I will have to do this only only every 6 weeks as opposed to every fortnight.
But really, why can't Niantic introduce an increased distance cap for experienced nominators? I have 600-odd portals created; I know what I am doing. After all, I can open up Google Maps and edit just about anything in there because I am a "trusted" editor.
I mean it won't mean anything, as I can still with the same as I used to, but choosing with 7 eligible submissions I should be focusing on each fortnight was part of the fun.
I'm likely to run out of things in my area with an increased limit and will therefore be submitting more "maybe" submissions. (Well tbh I feel like sometimes I've already done that). It took me multiple months to submit a fitness trail (well actually 2 years as I stopped completely when the pandemic hit and the final nomination therefore didn't happen) Now I'll have the ability to do them all at once?
I don't feel like that's actually encouraging me to go back after they're accepted.
First we weren't reviewing fast enough, so special Wayfarer Events were held to incentivize reviewers to work through high-visibility backlogged areas.
Then, we weren't reviewing fast enough, so the powers that be dumped tens of thousands of sub-par points onto the map without waiting their turn in queue.
Now, we're likely to be faced with an increased backlog and submission wait time. I'm sure this will turn out to be our fault too, as reviewers, and I bet we'll see a creative solution in the future.
There are several facts that ring true to me:
Instituting this change before instituting the submitter test is a grave mistake. Education and communication have always been heavily requested items on these boards, and the submitter test was a lauded change that should have been prioritized.
Instituting such a massive bump in allowed submissions without any Wayfarer performance-based requirements is a slap in the face to our dedicated reviewers, and will increase backlogs accordingly. Wayfarer is a process cycle, not a single step: both submitters and reviewers are needed unless Niantic plans to dump unreviewed submissions into the database repeatedly as they have in the past.
Niantic increasingly places little value on the reviews being done and on the reviewers outside the internal paid group. Projects that improve database quality take a backseat to those that put more little dots on the map.
I really do try to be less critical, but this announcement was kind of a gut-punch. I'm sure I'll enjoy the increased numbers of submissions, but I would have been willing to earn them by reviewing.
Given that every GO players are able to nominate 1 per day, I can sense that a good number of players will submit "Today's I want a Pokestop in my house"‐quality nominations. If this went uncontrolled, some oldest nominations stuck for months will be stuck even longer.
@NianticTintino can you at least change the current review algorithm, and release the promised submitter test ASAP?
I'm excited for this. Plus it seems my local nominations are going in faster than before so whatever you are doing to fix the backlog please keep doing it. Where nominations used to take over a year, I just had several be submitted and accepted within 3-5 weeks. Also with uploading later I have several parks and trails I need to nominate and only doing 7 at a time would mean a few years to get all the stops done and in game.
I'm guessing, with the recent niantic doing their in-house review, they gonna are planning to do more in-house review to accommodate the increase number of submissions? Because i highly doubt they would increase the submission knowing there are a lot of backlog out there
First thank you for the announcement, it is good to have this information posted several weeks in advance rather than as it happens. So an improvement in wayfarer communication.
The wording could have been a little clearer - an example would have helped.
Personally I’m glad that there is an increase and the idea of a maximum accrual. The number of times I have been exploring and been limited to a few is high. I can see this really helping on visits to those areas which are POI poor.
I will look forward to it going live in Ingress - it would be good to indicate which month is the target.
I don’t know how much of a problem it will create. I don’t get the impression that those that submit poor quality POI sit down and constantly use up their opportunities. I think a midway point might have been to raise to 15 or 20 and monitor the impact, with the aim to increase if ok.
It would be good if this increase also went hand in hand with a nomination test, but also information about reviewing- to promote wayfarer and educate about what will happen. I would also make it clear to nominators that they may be in a slow moving area therefore manage expectations. So perhaps the email confirmation could make a statement warning it could take considerable time to resolve and not to resubmit as it will not help.
Just did some reviewing, someone actually nominated a primary school (nice of the nominator to put it in the title as well)
another nomination of some houses "who knows just moved here"
The submitter test they've mentioned once would be applicable on anyone who reaches the level requirements that allow them to submit. So the ones that already don't know the criteria but can already submit can keep on doing this. Even more than now...
Current rubbish-inflow needs to be stopped, not quite motivating for reviewers. Yes, you can think: "easy agreement" But the same goes for great nominations, those are also easy agreements.
I like the increased number of nominations, but there is still the problem of the queues and junk submissions.
So you have to motivate the revs better. Locally, the number of revs have dwindled ever since Wayfarer started, which I think is due to the very harsh rating of revs before and timeouts. So you have to motivate the revs better somehow. And a submitter test might not be a bad idea, either.
Testing the submitter BEFORE they can submit is supposed to be bad...?
Unfortunately, some learn it only the "hard way" and those who are not willing to take up the topic first and to inform themselves BEFORE, in my opinion can't have good intentions anyway.
Therefore, it would only make sense to lock them out from the start if they fail the test.
Just did some reviewing, someone actually nominated a primary school (nice of the nominator to put it in the title as well) and another nomination of some houses "who knows just moved here
Always nice when the submitter shoots themselves in the foot and gives you an easy agreement.
Comments
Glad we’re continuing the AMA tradition of big change that everyone would be asking about right after AMA questions have closed.
I can see why the changes have been made, but this has the potential to backfire terribly- especially in this current climate (looking at you, COVID-19 pandemic and all it's travel restrictions). If everyone had the freedom to travel, it could work- but the timing is oh so off!
I'm sorry Niantic, you've opened the doors for more abuse. People submitting things not worthy to be POI out of boredom or just not knowing what is suitable. Sadly, putting a limit on abuse reports will also make it worse.
But in an ideal 'pandemic free' universe: this could be awesome. (With education on what's a suitable POI of course!- Key word is 'Education' *hint* ) My family live in regional towns in Australia and I have a personal preference to stop in towns rather than rest stops or the side of the road on my road trips. sigh
Why now Niantic?
Is it though? I don’t see more nominations brought up THAT often here. Pogos most requested feature is to get rid of their density rules.
Don’t say that last part too loudly! Niantic will hear!
I'll acknowledge that the significantly increased refresh rate could lead to more chaff for the same bushel of good submissions if problematic submitters max out their capabilities. With a better than 80% acceptance rate and maxing out my submissions every fortnight, I think folks with my submission style will benefit significantly. I also enjoy hiking and camping, and that pool of 40 is whetting my appetite for submitting rural churches and trail markers to be the first Wayspot in the community.
As a reviewer, I'm ambivalent. As a submitter, I'm thrilled.
Yeah, same question. I have somewhere I'm going on the 15th, and I was going to save my 7 submissions that I am getting back around the 1st of October for then. So I'd hope I still keep my 7 I'd already have when the 12th rolls around... Because otherwise I'd only get to submit like 2 things in that area and lose my 7 slots.
WOW, lots of negative reactions! I don't really think that this is going to increase junk submissions any more than we had before. Junk submitters are new submitters. New submitters either become good submitters, or they quit submitting. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this doesn't have to be as bad as people are thinking it will. On top of that, it seems that something was changed recently to help nominations go through faster, so if that's the case, this isn't going to hinder submission times. Put another way - I think the only place where this is going to actually have a noticeable affect anywhere is in the DEDICATED submitters who consistently submit - they now can plan better for going to remote areas and have more than 7 submissions. For these Wayfarers, this is a HUGE gift.
So I say THANK YOU for this, and let's just wait and see if there are any issues before jumping to conclusions...
It's nice to get more slots, but it's gonna clog the system even more at worst.
I would really prefer to see a system where nomination slots are at least dependent on review activity.
Review activity is really awful for a while. People got no motivation to review, not even upgrades lure them and many players don't even know about the existence of Wayfarer.
If you have turned off newsletters, you never receive the mail which teaches you about Wayfarer. The Wayfarer system mails also absolutely do not mention its existence. Why? The only other way you may learn about it, is being in communities or reading news, but many aren't.
And ingame rewards would really be appreciated, even if it's one single Super Incubator in PoGo and a Very Rare Mulit-Hack and a Heatsink in Ingress.
You can't boost nomination amount while not boosting review activity.
I would say junk submitters are UNEDUCATED submitters (or abusive ones). I’m personally frustrated that we were told there would be a test for submitters, that hasn’t been implemented yet, and they are suddenly increasing nominations with a fast approaching date when it wasn’t even pushed that hard for.
If they announce the submitters test will be going live the same day, I think this news will be received differently.
There are also a few more aspects of this announcement that many of us are reacting to than just the increased nominations.
I take this to mean I accrue 2 per day, forever (no maximum accrual). I can use up to 40 per day, until I run out of accrued.
I like to explore places with my drone. And I like to do mission banners, then go through the keys I got from hacking (like a travelogue). If I'm at a place with lots of misspelled Titles, I could submit 40 edits one day, and another 40 the next.
That sounds fine for proven nominators/editors. But it's a big frightening for new people who submit their dog because "need moar pokestopz".
Putting everything else aside, being able to save up 40 nominations before heading out to a Wayspot-lacking rural town or national park is going to be a game-changer for me, it will make longer trips to out of the way locations much more worth it.
Okay, this is my take and bundle of questions on this.
But I hope this doesn't have the same numbers as they do in Ingress. For all of these, it is again another case where in an attempt to curb abuse, implementations are heavy-handed and there is collateral damage. All of a sudden, the new nominations are ample (which is fantastic for most people... of both natures) whether they're over the moon over being able to submit many more things or whether they'll have more fun submitting even more trash and increasing the backlog even more.
Please think about the following:
You can be creative on what increases the level of a Wayfinder. But in this model, know that most abusers will likely not make it past Level 2. Reward and acknowledge the Wayfinders who consistently contribute to your database.
Almost everyone has an issue with turnaround times (although my city doesn't really... just in very specific pockets), but this has some potential to balloon to something too wild to bear. I think this is a nice system, accruing things at a daily rate rather than waiting for the slot to replenish after exactly 14 days.
But I am going to have a joyride visiting rural and regional towns, stockpiling nominations weeks in advance before a planned major roadtrip.
At least in my area, submissions take so long without upgrades that I end up upgrading every single one. This means I end up reviewing enough for an upgrade for every submission, so it probably does help overall if I, and people in cells that require upgrades, get more submissions that are worthless without 100 or so reviews. As for people in cells that aren't taking 2 years to resolve? I'm sure this will slow things down a little for them, but those cells are so boosted anyway that I can't imagine they'll see that big of a dip.
With whatever change that was implemented recently allowing nominations to actually move through the queue I would have probably waited until all the back logs were less than 30 days before doubling submissions for Pogo.
For me personally, as a rural player and obviously the only player who submits it helps me out greatly. I have about an 80% acceptance rate. My nominations move through quickly without upgrades.
However, as a reviewer I know a lot of things I review have been sitting g in queue forever. How do I know this? It's been at least 7 months since I've seen snow on the ground here. Many nominations in large cities in my state have snow in the pictures. That means they have been hanging around a while. Let's fix the backlog. Then add nomination capability.
Are you really serious? @NianticAaron @NianticGiffard @NianticCasey-ING @NianticTintino WHO comes up with such an idea? Do you actually know how damn full the queue is? For me a submisson without upgrade takes 18 months. There are places where a submisson without upgrade takes 1 week. There is currently no relation why there are so big differences in the processing time .And now you want to make the queue even fuller ??? Then it comes to an even bigger standstill. WHY you don't change the system so that 1 upgrade = 1 submisson!? Then the players HAVE to review before submitting. The pool would be processed much faster, fake submissons would be prevented, so why do you make the system even worse than it already is ???? This change is completely counterproductive. And makes absolutely no sense. Clearly far too much, the number of submissons should be reduced rather than increased.Or increase the number of submissons through a level system for players who continuously submit good submissons and evaluate them permanently, as a kind of reward. Here players are rewarded who rest on the work of others, who mess the pool or who deliberately clog the pool with fakes. But not like this. There are simply too many players who have never made or will do a review but who constantly propose new submissons to get one or more wayspots on their own doorstep far too often and not pay any attention to the quality of the submissons because Niantic is still Does far too little to educate the players (I only say information boards or bike paths). So Niantic should focus more on reviewing the players MORE and BETTER than submitting more!
I join @AisforAndis-ING, @dustinyeeaah-PGO, @stephen22201-ING, @oscarc1-ING @RyuuVanDraco-PGO here because you are absolutely right!
Thanks ✌🏻
Please institute a submitter test prior to this. This sounds like it will bog down an already stressed system without thinking of the consequence. We've been asking so long now for a way for abusers to actually get punished and for bad submitters to actually get educated on the eligibility and criteria.
already fed-up with fake nominations from children who play pogo. Now we can expect more because of this update. Well @NianticTintino please do something about technically verifying submission before putting it for reviewing in wayfarer. We are spending our time to make your lightship a better place..so give us some credits. Especially Ingress players who made this possible from start.
Now Ingress players and their game experience are not considered by Niantic and our contribution made worthless.
Please do something to prevent fake nominations, stealing photos of already submitted POI, and please prevent "Noobs who want Pokestop and gyms in their home " nominations.
Thank U .
Appreciate your efforts to make this better place.
So, as an Ingress player, I will now be getting slightly less theoretical nominations than before, albeit with the very considerable benefit that I can store more. I can live with this - the biggest problem with nominating for me is the 25 km distance limitation. If I want to nominate things, I have to drive from my house to do so, since almost all my candidates are between 30 and 40 km away. (I nominate canidates in the countryside, as my city is already well supplied with portals). Now I will have to do this only only every 6 weeks as opposed to every fortnight.
But really, why can't Niantic introduce an increased distance cap for experienced nominators? I have 600-odd portals created; I know what I am doing. After all, I can open up Google Maps and edit just about anything in there because I am a "trusted" editor.
I mean it won't mean anything, as I can still with the same as I used to, but choosing with 7 eligible submissions I should be focusing on each fortnight was part of the fun.
I'm likely to run out of things in my area with an increased limit and will therefore be submitting more "maybe" submissions. (Well tbh I feel like sometimes I've already done that). It took me multiple months to submit a fitness trail (well actually 2 years as I stopped completely when the pandemic hit and the final nomination therefore didn't happen) Now I'll have the ability to do them all at once?
I don't feel like that's actually encouraging me to go back after they're accepted.
More submission will definitely lead to more bad nominations. I hope the review ranks don’t change much because of this influx of nominations.
First we weren't reviewing fast enough, so special Wayfarer Events were held to incentivize reviewers to work through high-visibility backlogged areas.
Then, we weren't reviewing fast enough, so the powers that be dumped tens of thousands of sub-par points onto the map without waiting their turn in queue.
Now, we're likely to be faced with an increased backlog and submission wait time. I'm sure this will turn out to be our fault too, as reviewers, and I bet we'll see a creative solution in the future.
There are several facts that ring true to me:
I really do try to be less critical, but this announcement was kind of a gut-punch. I'm sure I'll enjoy the increased numbers of submissions, but I would have been willing to earn them by reviewing.
What a terrible decision, I must say.
Given that every GO players are able to nominate 1 per day, I can sense that a good number of players will submit "Today's I want a Pokestop in my house"‐quality nominations. If this went uncontrolled, some oldest nominations stuck for months will be stuck even longer.
@NianticTintino can you at least change the current review algorithm, and release the promised submitter test ASAP?
I'm excited for this. Plus it seems my local nominations are going in faster than before so whatever you are doing to fix the backlog please keep doing it. Where nominations used to take over a year, I just had several be submitted and accepted within 3-5 weeks. Also with uploading later I have several parks and trails I need to nominate and only doing 7 at a time would mean a few years to get all the stops done and in game.
I'm guessing, with the recent niantic doing their in-house review, they gonna are planning to do more in-house review to accommodate the increase number of submissions? Because i highly doubt they would increase the submission knowing there are a lot of backlog out there
@NianticTintino
First thank you for the announcement, it is good to have this information posted several weeks in advance rather than as it happens. So an improvement in wayfarer communication.
The wording could have been a little clearer - an example would have helped.
Personally I’m glad that there is an increase and the idea of a maximum accrual. The number of times I have been exploring and been limited to a few is high. I can see this really helping on visits to those areas which are POI poor.
I will look forward to it going live in Ingress - it would be good to indicate which month is the target.
I don’t know how much of a problem it will create. I don’t get the impression that those that submit poor quality POI sit down and constantly use up their opportunities. I think a midway point might have been to raise to 15 or 20 and monitor the impact, with the aim to increase if ok.
It would be good if this increase also went hand in hand with a nomination test, but also information about reviewing- to promote wayfarer and educate about what will happen. I would also make it clear to nominators that they may be in a slow moving area therefore manage expectations. So perhaps the email confirmation could make a statement warning it could take considerable time to resolve and not to resubmit as it will not help.
So more about education of the whole process.
Enough said 😑
Just did some reviewing, someone actually nominated a primary school (nice of the nominator to put it in the title as well)
another nomination of some houses "who knows just moved here"
The submitter test they've mentioned once would be applicable on anyone who reaches the level requirements that allow them to submit. So the ones that already don't know the criteria but can already submit can keep on doing this. Even more than now...
Current rubbish-inflow needs to be stopped, not quite motivating for reviewers. Yes, you can think: "easy agreement" But the same goes for great nominations, those are also easy agreements.
I like the increased number of nominations, but there is still the problem of the queues and junk submissions.
So you have to motivate the revs better. Locally, the number of revs have dwindled ever since Wayfarer started, which I think is due to the very harsh rating of revs before and timeouts. So you have to motivate the revs better somehow. And a submitter test might not be a bad idea, either.
Testing the submitter BEFORE they can submit is supposed to be bad...?
Unfortunately, some learn it only the "hard way" and those who are not willing to take up the topic first and to inform themselves BEFORE, in my opinion can't have good intentions anyway.
Therefore, it would only make sense to lock them out from the start if they fail the test.
Just did some reviewing, someone actually nominated a primary school (nice of the nominator to put it in the title as well) and another nomination of some houses "who knows just moved here
Always nice when the submitter shoots themselves in the foot and gives you an easy agreement.